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William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics Papers

Number 2

Economics and Maritime Strategy:Implications for the 21st Century

Proceedings A Workshop Sponsored by the

William B. Ruger Chair of National Security EconomicsNewport, Rhode Island6–8 November 2006

Richmond M. Lloyd, editorWilliam B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics

Naval War CollegeNewport, Rhode Island


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The Naval War College expresses appreciation to the Naval WarCollege Foundation, through the generosity of the William B. RugerChair of National Security Economics, in the preparation and pre-sentation of this workshop.

The views expressed in the William B. Ruger Chair of National Secu-rity Economics Papers are those of the authors and do not necessarilyreflect the opinions of the Naval War College or the Department of

the Navy.

Correspondence concerning the Ruger Papers may be addressed toRichmond M. Lloyd, William B. Ruger Chair of National SecurityEconomics, Naval War College, 686 Cushing Road, Newport,RI 02841-1207; by telephone at 401.841.3669; or by e-mail [email protected]. Our website is http://www.nwc.navy.mil/nsdm/Rugerpapers.htm.

ISBN 978-1-884733-42-0

Printed in the United States of America


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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Developing a New Maritime Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Workshop Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Opening Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Rear Admiral Jacob L. Shuford, USN President, U.S. Naval War College

Panel I: Maritime Strategy in a Globalizing World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Stability and Change in U.S. Grand Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Dr. Barry R. Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Maritime Strategy in a Gobalising World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Dr. Geoffrey Till, Professor of Maritime Studies, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London

The United States and Maritime Strategy: A Parochial View from Newport. . 25 Dr. Timothy D. Hoyt, Professor of Strategy and Policy,U.S. Naval War College

Panel I Summary of Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Moderator: Dr. John H. Maurer, Chairman, Strategy and Policy Department, U.S. Naval War College

Panel II: Economic Prosperity and Maritime Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Economic Prosperity and Maritime Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Dr. Richard N. Cooper, Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics, Harvard University

Asia’s New Wealth and Its Implications for Maritime Strategy . . . . . . . . 39 Dr. Ellen L. Frost, Visiting Fellow, Institute for International Economics,

and Adjunct Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University

Panel II Summary of Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Moderator: Dr. Peter Dombrowski, Chairman, Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

Panel III: Economics and Emerging Maritime Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

India and the United States: Economic, Strategic, andMaritime Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Dr. Stephen Philip Cohen, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies Program, Brookings Institution

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“Economics” and Established Maritime Powers: Resource Implications of theNew Maritime Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Robert O. Work, Senior Defense Analyst, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

China’s Economic Rise: Impact on U.S.-Australian Alliance . . . . . . . . . 73

Dr. Leif R. Rosenberger, Economic Adviser, U.S. Pacific Command

Panel III Summary of Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Moderator: Dr. Mackubin Thomas Owens, Associate Dean of Academics for Electives and Directed Research and Professor of National Security Decision Making, U.S. Naval War College

Panel IV: Terrorism, Proliferation, Transnational Crime, and Migration . . . . . . 79

The Threat to the Maritime Domain: How Real Is the Terrorist Threat? . . . 81 Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, Head, International Centre for Political Violenceand Terrorism Research, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,and Senior Fellow, Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

WMD Proliferation: The Nexus between State, Nonstate, and Antistate Actors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Dr. Mohan Malik, Professor, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies

Irregular Warfare, Armed Groups, and the Long War: A New AnalyticalFramework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Andrea J. Dew, Research Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, HarvardUniversity

Panel IV Summary of Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Moderator: Professor Jeffrey H. Norwitz, John Nicholas Brown Academic Chair of Counterterrorism and Professor of National Security Decision Making, U.S. Naval War College

Panel V: International Cooperation in Securing the Maritime Commons. . . . . 111

Legal Interoperability Issues in International Cooperation Measures to Securethe Maritime Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Professor Craig H. Allen, Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law, U.S. Naval War College

Addendum: International Cooperation in Securing the MaritimeCommons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119


International Cooperation in Securing the Maritime Commons . . . . . . . 127Vice Admiral Lutz Feldt, German Navy (Retired)

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ECONOMICS AND MARITIME STRATEGY: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY


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Panel V Summary of Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Moderator: Dr. Thomas R. Fedyszyn, Security, Strategy, and ForcesCourse Director, National Security Decision Making Department, U.S. Naval War College

Working Discussion: Findings and Recommendations for Maritime Strategy. . . 133

Moderator: Ambassador Paul D. Taylor, Senior Strategic Researcher,Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

Concluding Discussion: Findings and Recommendationsfor Maritime Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Moderator: Dr. Richmond M. Lloyd, William B. Ruger Chair of NationalSecurity Economics, U.S. Naval War College

Concluding Remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Dr. Richmond M. Lloyd, William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics, U.S. Naval War College

Participant Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

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CONTENTS


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Introduction

Workshop Focus

The purpose of this workshop is to provide a collegial forum for a small and select group of na-

tional security specialists to explore the role of a maritime strategy in furthering the twin goals of economic prosperity and security.

Workshop Background

Globalization can be viewed as the flow of goods, services, funds, people, technology, and in-formation across borders. In the twenty-first century it is characterized by increasing volumeand speed. Economic productivity and prosperity have been enhanced by the free flows of goods, services, monies, ideas, and talents with world trade expanding and world GDP grow-ing over the last several decades. A major portion of these flows occurs on the global maritimecommons.

The National Security Strategy of the United States calls for igniting a new era of global eco-nomic growth through free markets and free trade. It seeks to expand the circle of developmentby opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy. And it seeks agendas for co-operative action with other main centers of global power.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to globalization, which comes from the vulnerabilities of theinternational system. Terrorism, proliferation and potential use of weapons of mass destruc-tion, transnational criminal activities, and forced migration are significant threats to global secu-rity. The global maritime commons provides the highways for these security threats.

Thus, the National Security Strategy focuses on defeating global terrorism, preventing attacksagainst the United States and friends, defusing regional conflicts, and preventing access to andthe use of weapons of mass destruction. Besides engaging the opportunities of globalization it isnecessary to confront the challenges of globalization.

This workshop explores the important relationships between economics and security, with em-phasis on a maritime strategy. Its purpose is to contribute to the development of a maritimestrategy in support of the overarching grand strategy of the United States. The workshop is or-ganized using the above construct.

Workshop Venue and Format

A total of 29 participants attended this, by invitation only, workshop held at the Naval War Col-lege in Newport Rhode Island. The College and its staff provide a professional environment,

with full computer and graphic support, to facilitate small group workshops in exploring theirspecific issues.

Panelists prepared and presented their papers (approximately 1500–2000 words) on topics of their choice within the subject area of their respective panel. Following a brief presentation of each panelist’s paper, all participants engaged in extensive discussion of the papers and the fo-cus of the panel. All discussions were conducted under a non-attribution policy.

All papers (some longer versions have been included), summaries of working group discussions(prepared by each panel moderator), and key findings and recommendations are included inthis monograph. Workshop findings will inform the development of a maritime strategy cur-rently underway.

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This monograph is available to the general public at http://www.nwc.navy.mil/nsdm/Rugerpapers.htm

William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics

The Ruger Chair was established to support research and study on the interrelationships be-

tween economics and security. A fundamental premise is that without security it is difficult tohave economic prosperity and without prosperity it is difficult to have security.

The intent of this Ruger Chair–sponsored workshop is to support individual research, publica-tion, and a continuing dialogue on matters important to national security economics. It ishoped that research done for this workshop will provide participants with the building blocksfor further research and publication.

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Developing a New Maritime Strategy

The Navy is setting out a series of strategic plans to guide its way ahead in the 21st Century. The Maritime Strategy is one element of a larger four-part structure that includes:

Vision sets the ends. The Navy’s vision is Sea Power 21.

Strategy is the ways and means to achieve the ends set forth in the vision. The new MaritimeStrategy will fill this role.

Tactics, as addressed in the Naval Operations Concept , comprise the way resources are usedand applied by the warfighter.

Resources are finite, and the Navy Strategic Plan will inform and guide programmers in thedevelopment of the budget submission.

The process for creating a new maritime strategy isn’t about updating an existing

document . . . it focuses on a new strategy to address current challenges and to guide theNavy in an entirely new, globally-connected environment that has not existed in thepast.

• It will build on the vision outlined in Sea Power 21, account for the ability to shape theenvironment, and provide the structure and guidance needed for fleet operationalconcepts in homeland defense, the War on Terror, irregular warfare and conventionalcampaigns.

• The Maritime Strategy will connect with published guidance and will serve as the over-arching guidance, complementing the vision of Sea Power 21 and its tenets of Sea Strike,

Sea Shield and Sea Basing, which define Navy capabilities.• To develop the strategy we are seeking a competition of ideas, beginning with a series of

forums focused on internal and external audiences to accurately define ourenvironment. We encourage dissenting views and will build a document considering theinput of all. The development process will pass through five phases.

• Phase I: Collect Inputs and Analyze Strategic Environment . This begins the processand continues through all phases.

• Phase II: Develop Maritime Strategies. Discuss strategic theories in public forums inorder to socialize initial concepts.

• Phase III: Test, Examine and Refine Alternatives. The Navy will legitimize and validate proposed strategies through the testing and gaming process and analysis of results.

• Phase IV: Synthesize and Report . The Navy will synthesize successful strategies intoone comprehensive strategy.

• Phase V: Sustainment . The Navy will continue to promote and uphold principles of the Maritime Strategy, ensuring its enduring value and legitimacy.

Using a linear and collaborative approach, input will be sought from individuals and organiza-

tions such as OSD, the Joint Staff, Combatant and Component Commanders, USMC, USCG,business and academia, the Interagency, and our friends around the world.

We see a new maritime strategy influencing the next cycle of strategic thinking, including thenext Navy Strategic Plan and into the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

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These are dynamic times. The maritime security environment is constantly changing. And ourstrategies and strategic documents must change with them as necessary to remain relevant. It isa continuous cycle.

“Where the old Maritime Strategy focused on sea control, the new one must recognize that theeconomic tide of all nations rises—not when the seas are controlled by one—but rather when

they are made safe and free for all.”—Admiral Michael Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations

(Current Strategy Forum, Naval War College, 14 June 2006)

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Agenda

Economics and Maritime Strategy:Implications for the 21st Century

A Workshop Sponsored by theWilliam B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics

Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island6–8 November 2006

Monday, 6 November 20061840 Depart Hotel

1900 Welcome Dinner, President’s Quarters AA

Tuesday, 7 November 20060740 Depart Hotel

0800 Welcome Continental Breakfast, Decision Support Center

0840 Opening Remarks

Rear Admiral Jacob L. Shuford, USN, President, U.S. NavalWar College

0845 Panel I: Maritime Strategy in a Globalizing World

Dr. Barry R. Posen, Ford International Professor of PoliticalScience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Geoffrey Till, Professor of Maritime Studies, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London

Dr. Timothy D. Hoyt, Professor of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College

Moderator: Dr. John H. Maurer, Chairman, Strategy and Policy Department, U.S. Naval War College

1015 Break

1030 Panel II: Economic Prosperity and Maritime Strategy

Dr. Richard N. Cooper, Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics, Harvard University

Dr. Ellen L. Frost, Visiting Fellow, Institute for International

Economics, and Adjunct Research Fellow, Institute of NationalStrategic Studies, National Defense University

Moderator: Dr. Peter Dombrowski, Chairman, Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

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1200 Lunch, RADM Joseph Strasser Dining Room

1330 Panel III: Economics and Emerging Maritime Powers

Dr. Stephen Philip Cohen, Senior Fellow, Foreign PolicyStudies Program, Brookings Institution

Mr. Robert O. Work, Senior Defense Analyst, Center for Strategicand Budgetary Assessments

Dr. Leif R. Rosenberger, Economic Adviser, U.S. Pacific Command

Moderator: Dr. Mackubin Thomas Owens, Associate Dean of Academics for Electives and Directed Research and Professor of National Security Decision Making, U.S. Naval War College

1500 Break

1515 Panel IV: Terrorism, Proliferation, Transnational Crime, and Migration Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, Head, International Centre for PoliticalViolence and Terrorism Research, Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, Singapore, and Senior Fellow, Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Dr. Mohan Malik, Professor, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies

Ms. Andrea J. Dew, Research Fellow, Belfer Center for Scienceand International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard

University

Moderator: Professor Jeffrey H. Norwitz, John Nicholas Brown Academic Chair of Counterterrorism and Professor of NationalSecurity Decision Making, U.S. Naval War College

1645 Adjourn

1650 Return to Hotel

1845 Depart Hotel

1900 Dinner

Wednesday, 8 November 20060740 Depart Hotel

0800 Continental Breakfast, Decision Support Center

0845 Panel V: International Cooperation in Securing the Maritime Commons


Vice Admiral Lutz Feldt, German Navy (Retired)

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Moderator: Dr. Thomas R. Fedyszyn, Security, Strategy, and Forces Course Director, National Security Decision Making Department, U.S. Naval War College

1015 Break

1030 Working Discussion: Findings and Recommendations for MaritimeStrategy

Moderator: Ambassador Paul D. Taylor, Senior Strategic Researcher, Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

1200 Lunch

1315 Concluding Discussion: Findings and Recommendations for MaritimeStrategy

Moderator: Dr. Richmond M. Lloyd, William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics, U.S. Naval War College

1445 Concluding Remarks

Moderator: Dr. Richmond M. Lloyd, William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics, U.S. Naval War College

1500 Adjourn

1515 Depart to Airport

Participants:

Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, USN (Retired), Director, Center for Strategic Studies,Center for Naval Analyses

Rear Admiral (LH) Philip Hart Cullom, USN, Director for Strategy and Policy, OPNAV

Dr. Eric V. Thompson, Director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses

CDR Paul J. Tortora, USN, OPNAV N3/5 Strategic Action Group

LtCol Kelly P. Houlgate, USMC, Strategic Analyst, Strategic Initiatives Group, Headquarters Marine Corps

Professor Don Marrin, Assistant Research Professor, War Gaming Department, U.S. Naval War College

Dr. Derek S. Reveron, Associate Professor of National Security Decision Making, U.S. Naval War College

CDR Alan L. Boyer, USN, Workshop Administrative Assistant, Military Professor, National Security Decision Making Department, U.S. Naval War College

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AGENDA


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Opening Remarks

Rear Admiral Jacob L. Shuford, USNPresident, Naval War College

This workshop, sponsored by Professor Rich Lloyd, the Naval WarCollege’s William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics,is a key element of a broader undertaking to craft a new maritimestrategy for the United States of America. The focus of this work-shop is a consideration of the implications of economics and mari-time strategy in the globalized environment of the twenty-firstcentury. This is truly important work, because, in an era of global-ization driven by our ability to exchange information instanta-neously with every corner of the globe and our ability to travel byair in a matter of hours to every capital city on the planet, we would

do well to remember that virtually all of the raw and finished goodspropelling the global economy moves by sea. So, too, the sea canbe misused and undermine the stability of global markets, provid-

ing state and nonstate actors a medium to transport weapons of mass destruction and theirmeans of delivery; giving terrorists and modern-day pirates an avenue of attack; or aiding re-gimes engaged in forced migration. Clearly, if we take the global maritime commons forgranted, we risk imperiling both global economic prosperity and international security.

To aid in developing a new maritime strategy, a strategy that will both inform and support theemerging grand strategy of the United States, this workshop brings together people of extraor-dinary talent and value to our effort. This is an intellectual effort, requiring diverse expertise in

the economic, political, and military disciplines. The extraordinary range and depth of perspec-tive, authority, and intellect of the participants in this workshop will serve the Navy and the nation

well as we move downrange to articulate and clarify America’s maritime strategic options forthe twenty-first century.

It is worth noting how well this workshop fits within the overall effort to develop a new maritimestrategy. In the CNO’s [Chief of Naval Operations] speech at the Current Strategy Forum heldlast June at the Naval War College, he highlighted how the effects of globalization drive theneed for a new strategy.

• Expansion of interdependent world markets

• The friction created in those market-based economies by “the race for energy.”

• Global instant access to ideas and ideologies.

“Let’s be frank,” the CNO said: “The reason we do not have such a new maritime strategy al-ready is that the scope and the scale of threat—the complexity of this globalized era, and thisstaggering pace of change seem almost impossible to plan for.” In the same speech, the CNOmade clear that this strategy must be “far above anything Mahan could have envisioned in hisday.” Such an effort is indeed at the level of what Sir Julian Stafford Corbett defined as “grandstrategy.”

The stakeholders in this broader effort are many. The Coast Guard and the Marine Corps arefully integrated (after all, we are talking about a “maritime” strategy), and we have participationacross many governmental agencies, the commercial sector, and the other services. We also

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have developed an extensive agenda with our international naval partner nations to make surethat there is comprehensive opportunity for them to participate.

The guidance we have from the CNO is that our process be open, inclusive, auditable, and de-signed to enable a competition of ideas. We have avoided establishing precepts that might arti-ficially constrain debate. Yet some most certainly emerge as lynchpin strategic notions to be

considered. One, for example, may be found in this quote from the CNO’s recent interview inSea Power Magazine: “Where our previous maritime strategy was designed just to defeat a single enemy at sea, our new one must be centered upon building partnerships across the world.”

No one disputes that we are a maritime nation. It follows that a maritime perspective is funda-mental to any grand strategy for the United States. And when we consider the fact that grandstrategy is defined by the art of maximizing the influence of a nation—or groups of nations—tosupport policy objectives in war or peace, the special character and traditions of maritime forcespresent themselves as particularly relevant to an era of globalization.

At the end of this workshop, I have no doubt that we will be a lot more confident about just

where, why, and how maritime forces of this nation can matter most in advancing economicprosperity and security.

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Panel I

Maritime Strategy in a Globalizing World

Dr. Barry R. PosenFord International Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Geoffrey TillProfessor of Maritime Studies, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London

Dr. Timothy D. HoytProfessor of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College

Moderator:Dr. John H. MaurerChairman, Strategy and Policy Department, U.S. Naval War College


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Stability and Change in U.S. Grand Strategy

Dr. Barry R. PosenFord International Professor of Political Science

Massachusetts Institute of TechnologySince the emergence of the Global War on Terror, now termed the Long War, as the cen-terpiece of U.S. grand strategy in 2001, the post–Cold War U.S. grand strategy debate has nar-rowed significantly. Essentially three alternative strategies now compete for pride of place. Twoare variants of a “primacy” strategy. One is a variant of “restraint,” sometimes termed “off-shore balancing.”1 All three strategies take globalization as a given and as a positive develop-ment. None specifically connects U.S. military power to globalization. To the extent that global-ization can be argued to have negative consequences, restraint offers a different remedy thandoes either version of primacy.

Below, I offer a brief characterization of globalization and speculate on its positive and negativeresults. I then discuss the three grand strategies that remain visible in the U.S. public policy de-bate, and their suggested remedies. I also discuss the military strengths and weaknesses of theUnited States to gauge which strategy’s remedies are most feasible.

For purposes of this discussion, globalization is the umbrella term that captures the current worldwide extent of capitalism and the material facts that have enabled this extension. Today we see voluminous international trade and investment, as well as extensive global supplychains. This is enabled by redundant, reliable, high-capacity, and inexpensive global transpor-tation networks—mainly sea transport, but also air and land. It is also enabled by capacious,real-time, global means of communication.

The positive results of globalization are clear. Labor, capital, and talent have been mobilized ona massive scale. An intense international division of labor has permitted very great efficienciesand high productivity. This has made for high growth in many countries, and remarkably highgrowth in a few.

It is arguable that globalization has also produced some negative results. In particular, it hasmade for tremendous disruption of traditional societies.2 The general improvement in the wel-fare of people the world over has permitted a massive population explosion, which has not yetsubsided. Many of these people are moving into large urban areas. Wealth is unevenly distrib-uted in most of these societies, so cities fill up with the poor and the insecure. Millions of peopleare thus “socially mobilized” for participation in politics. They demand security and good gov-ernance, but existing state structures are often overwhelmed. Thus millions of people are vul-nerable to appeals by extremists of every type. The most common type of appeal mixestraditional nationalist and religious themes and harks back to a better past.

As globalization creates new political demands, the international transportation and communi-cation linkages that facilitate international trade and investment also offer opportunities for

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PANEL I: STABILITY AND CHANGE IN U.S. GRAND STRATEGY DR. BARRY R. POSEN

1. Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions of U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security 21,no. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 5–53, summarizes the immediate post–Cold War grand strategy debate in the

United States. In that article the term “neo-isolationism” was used instead of “restraint.” More recently theterm “off-shore balancing” has come into use.

2. Jonathan Kirshner, “Globalization, Power, and Prospect,” Chapter 11, pp. 321–338, in Johnathan Kirshner,ed., Globalization and National Security (New York: Routledge, 2006), argues that globalization has thesedisruptive effects. See also Michael Mousseau, “Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror,” InternationalSecurity.


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organized “antisystem” groups to move people and resources around the globe. These may beemployed to organize domestic opposition to particular governments, such as the Tamil Tigersare. Globalization also provides opportunities for transnational antisystem parties such as al-Qa’ida.

The Global Distribution of Military Power

Any grand strategy must address the global distribution of military power. Typically this is mea-sured in terms of gross domestic product, defense spending, military manpower, and majoritems of military equipment. By most measures, the United States is far and away the greatestmilitary power in the system and arguably has the longest global reach of any power in history.This situation, a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, quickly came to be seen as natural bymany in the U.S. political elite, so much so that reflection on the remaining limits to U.S. mili-tary power was rarely seen.

A qualitative assessment of U.S. military power relative to others is also necessary. Broadlyspeaking, the United States enjoys what I have called “command of the commons.”3 The

United States commands the sea, the air at altitudes above 10,000 feet, and space. If it wishes,it can drive others from these media. There is little that others can do about it. Competition inthis realm depends on areas of great U.S. superiority—military research and development, ex-tensive economic resources, highly skilled military professionals. It is plausible that U.S. com-mand of the commons has been an important enabler of globalization. That said, the militaryadvantages of the United States and other western powers diminish in the “contested zones”—the littorals; the skies below 10,000 feet, where cheap antiaircraft weapons are effective; and onland—wherever the use of infantry is more appropriate than the use of armored vehicles.Though the United States certainly can fight effectively in these zones, the fights are likely to bemore demanding, and many more nation-states are likely to be capable of tilting with U.S.forces. The contested zones remain contested because in these areas quantities of motivatedsoldiers matter; background noise reduces the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence-gathering tech-nologies; and the weapons necessary to do damage are cheap and plentiful.

The Two Variants of Primacy

Both mainstream Republican strategic thinkers and mainstream Democratic strategic thinkershave learned to love the preeminent material power position that the collapse of the SovietUnion bequeathed to the United States: primacy has captured the hearts of both parties. Forthis discussion I will term the strategy of the current Bush administration “national liberalism”and the former Clinton administration “liberal internationalism.” Both agree that the United

States faces no peer competitor and that it is difficult, for a host of reasons, for the other conse-quential powers to coordinate a coalition to truly “balance” American power, especially Ameri-can military power. Both strategies are committed to maintaining this preeminent powerposition for as long as possible, though neither Democrats nor Republicans have yet tested the

willingness of the American people to pay significant costs to do so.

Both strategies are predisposed to use U.S. power for a variety of positive purposes abroad. Of particular interest to both parties are failed or failing states or particularly illiberal states, withmeaningful military capabilities, in particularly sensitive geostrategic regions (often called“rogues.”) To the extent that globalization is partly responsible for these problems, both the“national liberals” and the “liberal internationalists” still seem inclined to deal with these prob-

lems in the places they emerge. Democrats came to these beliefs in the 1990s, while most

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3. Barry R. Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” InternationalSecurity 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5–46.


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Republicans then demurred.4 Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the fact that theperpetrators had profited from al-Qa’ida’s cozy relationship with the Taliban regime in Afghan-istan, Bush administration strategists have come to share the view that these kinds of threats areimportant.5 So-called neoconservatives within the Republican Party were the strongest advo-cates of this view.

Both schools of primacy believe that weak, failing, or rogue states are hatcheries of terrorism,fanaticism, bloodshed, crime, and weapons of mass destruction. These problems in one placeare expected to spread to other places. Containment is not an option; failed states or illiberalmilitant ones, should, if at all possible, be turned into successful democratic states through U.S.advice, cajoling, pressure, and occasionally direct intervention.

The main thing that “national liberals” and “liberal internationalists” disagree about in interna-tional politics relates to legitimacy. What is legitimacy worth relative to capability? Where doeslegitimacy come from? For purposes of this discussion, legitimacy means that an action takenby the United States, alone or with its allies, is acceptable to others, regardless of whether theyagree with all or even most of the specific reasons for the action. Liberal internationalists believe

that legitimacy is worth quite a lot in international politics, and that loss of legitimacy is the sameas the loss of material power. Liberal internationalists believe that legitimacy derives from lib-eral processes in international politics, which means that key U.S. actions, especially large ones,emerge from a process of give and take within distinctly international institutions. The UnitedStates typically will have more power than others within these institutions and can usually drivedecisions in the direction it wants, if it is a bit clever, a bit patient, and a bit willing to compro-mise. These small costs are expected to produce large dividends in political support, or at leasttoleration.

National liberals believe that legitimacy matters less than material power. U.S. interests shouldnot be amended, and U.S. actions should not be delayed for the purpose of generating legiti-macy. Legitimacy is nice to have, but not necessary. In any case, national liberals see legitimacyas arising from American distinctiveness. The United States is seen as the key liberal democraticpower. Other states are simply expected to understand this. U.S. actions in international politicsenjoy inherent legitimacy. In any case, U.S. actions are intended to produce more liberal demo-cratic states, and this too makes the action more legitimate. Legitimacy matters less to the cur-rent crop of Republican strategists than it does to Democratic strategists, and liberalinternational institutions are not seen as key contributors to legitimacy in any case.

For any future U.S. naval strategy, the similarities across the two parties matter more than thedifferences. The likely trajectory for U.S. grand strategy is more of the same, with some caution

introduced by the Iraq experience. Both versions of primacy need command of the commons,including command of the sea, to preserve the United States as the predominant globalpower—this allows the United States to keep the power of other states divided. Both versions of primacy need command of the sea in order to go where they wish to go to affect failed states orproblem states, and that could be anywhere. Both versions of primacy will remain committed,at least in theory, to regime change, which means an enduring requirement for “forcible entry”capability. Finally, both strategies need the Navy to have the ability to serve as the focus of a

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4. See the final strategy document of the Clinton administration, “A National Security Strategy for a Global Age,” The White House, December 2000. Among other things, the document is noteworthy for its frequent

references to globalization. Echoing many of these themes is G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter,codirectors, “Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century,” Final Paperof the Princeton Project on National Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,Princeton University, September 27, 2006.

5. “The National Security Strategy of the United State of America,” The White House, March 2006; and the“Quadrennial Defense Review Report,” U.S. Dept. of Defense, February 6, 2006.


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large coalition. Republican Party strategists have nothing against military cooperation withother states in a traditional alliance mode—the United States leads and others follow. They

value alliances as traditional tools of power.

To the extent that both versions of primacy retain their interest in the internal makeup of otherstates, both will need to confront the “contested zones.” Iraq ought to have taught a lesson

about how difficult these areas can be for the United States. It is too early to tell, however, whether or not this experience will cause a revision of the inclination inherent in both primacystrategies for direct military intervention on land to organize failing or failed states, or to reorga-nize rogue states.

Democratic party strategists, with their interest in institutions and legitimacy, may be willing topay some costs in military efficiency to ensure that others participate in agreed military actions.They may need a military that is a bit more capable of “waiting” for international institutions tosort out decisions, and a bit more capable of integrating disparate, perhaps even ineffectual,national militaries into a multinational effort in order to ensure legitimacy going into an action.The former may put a somewhat higher premium on the ability to enforce sanctions,

embargoes, and blockades, and the latter a bit more of a premium on “plug and play” com-mand and control, as well as diverse understanding of other navies and other cultures.

Restraint

Advocates of “restraint” differ significantly from the mainstream views in the two parties.6 Manyof these people are academics, realist theorists of international politics. Politically they run thegamut from Republicans, to Democrats, to Libertarians. They are the intellectual heirs of theBritish Empire’s “offshore balancing” strategy. Advocates of restraint tend to believe that theUnited States is quite secure, due to its great power, its weak and agreeable neighbors, and its

vast distance from most of the trouble in the world, distances patrolled by the U.S. Navy. Theysee the risk of a global anti-U.S. coalition as small. They see an enduring U.S. interest in ensur-ing that no great Eurasian superstate emerges through conquest that could rival U.S. power.

And they would argue that the United States should, through its own internal efforts, match asfar as possible the internal efforts that others make to grow their own power. If this proves im-possible, offshore balancers would join with other powers affected by such growth to form abalancing coalition.

These thinkers do not share the view that failed states, or illiberal states with some militarypower, constitute great threats to the United States, threats that need to be dealt withproactively. To the extent that globalization plays a role in fostering domestic and international

radical movements, these strategists are loath to intervene directly in the internal politics of other states to manage these problems. These strategists understand why and how the con-tested zone is a major enduring military problem for the United States. Rather, they would le-

verage U.S. command of the sea, air, and space to limit the freedom of movement of troublesome actors. They acknowledge that terrorism is a problem, but the first rule should beto do no harm. They accept that “national-ism” is at least as powerful as “liberal-ism.” Liberalpractices and institutions may have universal appeal, but each culture must find its own way tothese practices. The surest way for the United States to slow this development is to attach a“Made in the U.S.” label on it, which energizes nationalist resistance. Restraint advocates donot want the United States to confront local nationalisms, if this can be avoided.

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6. Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Come Home America: The Strategy of Restraint inthe Face of Temptation,” International Security 21, no. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 5–48, offers the cleareststatement of this grand strategy, and the most systematic argument supporting it.


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The main military capability that advocates of restraint wish to protect is the ability to use thesea lanes to assist allies, in order to protect regional balances of power. On this matter they haveno essential disagreement with primacists of either stripe. These strategists believe that strongstates are frightened of their immediate strong neighbors, so there is a tendency for regionalpower balances to form. If they need a little push, the United States should have the capabilityto provide that push. Countries striving to balance powerful neighbors and desirous of U.S.

help will have a strong interest in protecting their own waters and their own ports. Thus, fromthe point of view of traditional security concerns, the U.S. Navy would concentrate on the openoceans. Given the state of technology, this means the defense of civilian and military transportshipping against submarine threats and against long-range aviation armed with antishipmissiles.

U.S. naval power is a key enabler of either primacy strategy that the United States couldchoose, and given the trends in U.S. politics, the capabilities on hand will likely prove as attrac-tive to the next administration as they are to the present one. The trouble in Iraq has put the pri-macy strategies under an unflattering light, but there is still little evidence that elites havelearned much. Continuity is more likely. We can, however, see the likely direction of U.S. grand

strategy in the event of higher costs in Iraq, or reverses elsewhere. A strategy of restraint will in-clude many familiar roles for the Navy. That said, presuming that future administrations main-tain a positive view of globalization, then the Navy will also find itself having to deal with someof its negative consequences. Globalization is socially disruptive and makes enemies for theUnited States. These enemies can take advantage of the relative improvement in the ease of moving people and materiel around the world to do real, if limited, harm to the societies of democratic countries. The Navy may find a second mission in watching over the peacetime sealines of communication to reduce the prospects for those who would use them to do harm to usand to our friends.

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Maritime Strategy in a Gobalising World

Dr. Geoffrey TillProfessor of Maritime Studies

Defence Studies Department, King’s College LondonToday, two competing models of naval development reflect both the national security perspec-tives of states and the current state of globalisation. The biggest issue confronting national lead-ers when contemplating naval policy is, therefore, first to work out their attitudes toglobalisation.1

Model 1: National Navies

The first model of naval development reflects the Westphalian state system, with its assump-tions of unending competition between states for power influence, land and resources, ideolog-

ical supremacy and its preoccupations with military power. Basically naval developmentconforms to the notion that international politics is about who gets what, when, and how—andthat the provision of security is the fundamental justification for the state.

The characteristics of the national approach include an assumption that seapower is aboutbringing influence to bear on the behaviour of other states. The preoccupation is therefore peercompetition—when navies take each other as providing the benchmark for naval develop-ment. Naval development in one country is based upon, and possibly aimed against, the navaldevelopment of others. It is a case of like against like and broadly symmetrical conflict.

The main indicator of this is the search for decisive battle. Mahan, perhaps unfairly regarded as

the apostle of this approach for Mahan’s Creed, which emphasised the importance and the mil-itary character of seapower, was widely accepted and dominated naval development throughthe twentieth century, given its preoccupations with the first and second world wars and thecold war.

But perhaps it’s a new world now, calling for a new model of naval development—dominatedby a new style of Globalisation, driven not simply by states in their pursuit of the capacity totrade with advantage, but more by companies in search of free markets and individuals insis-tent on free information and open access and now technologically empowered to get it.Globalisation—the argument goes—is based on an expectation of mutual, though not neces-sarily equal, benefit to all, and on a set of liberal but universal trading values. These values haveresulted in the development of a world society which reduces the capacity of states for inde-pendent action and is thoroughly sea-based.

This is a world which picks out continents, trade routes and capital flows but ignores nations. Itdepends on sea-based trade and is expected to double or treble over the next 20 years.

But the system, however sophisticated, has always been vulnerable, especially now, with the‘just enough just in time’ philosophy. Modern industries plot the passage of containers in quar-ters of an hour.

PANEL I: MARITIME STRATEGY IN A GOBALISING WORLD DR. GEOFFREY TILL

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1. On this issue, Sam J. Tangredi [Ed.], Globalization and Maritime Power (Washington: National DefenseUniversity Press, 2002) and John Baylis and Steve Smith [Eds.], The Globalization of World Politics (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2001) are both good places to start.


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9/11 suggests that today’s threats are especially serious because of the emergence of new typesof threat. The target was uniquely significant—the World Trade Towers. These people aren’tabout arguing for a bigger slice of the cake; they want to destroy the bakery—the system, inother words. They are, however, half-supported by masses of people who do want a biggerslice of the cake, and who might be detached from this level of support by the development of amore equitable trading system. Hence the need for significant ideological, social and economic

strands to the defence of the system.Deliberate attack of, and lack of support for, the system are but two of the threats facing this sea-based trading system. Others include maritime crime, resource degradation, environmental de-terioration and inadvertent damage caused by conflicts ashore.2

An important element in all this is the unpredictability of future events. Iran 1979 is a good ex-ample of combinations of events which weren’t expected and perhaps could not have beenpredicted. The Iranian revolution did not make sense in conventional Western terms.

In the mid-1970s Iran was oil-rich, with more doctors per head of the population, more hospi-

tals, more tarmac roads, better water supplies than anywhere else in the Middle East, and yet it was here that there was a mediaeval backlash in the form of the regime of the ayatollahs. These were people who just do not sign up to the values of a world system that was producing all theseapparent benefits. Naval planners therefore have to cope with the possibility of strategicsurprise.

This range of known and unknown threats requires navies, and the need to act together in com-mon defence of the common benefits of the global system. Hence the emergence of the secondmodel of naval development:

Model 2: Collaborative Navies

With his talk of a community of interests and righteous ideals, Mahan has gone before us.3

Navies of this sort have an internationalist, a collaborative, almost collective world outlook.They see their role as defending the system, directly at sea and indirectly from the sea. Their ca-pacity to do so depends on four necessary naval capacities or roles.

1: Maintaining Sea Control

Now the focus in sea control is on the littoral rather than the open oceans. The U.S. Navy is nowthe biggest coastal navy in the world—only it operates on other peoples’ coasts. Here it, and its

allies, face a different kind of asymmetric threat and respond accordingly in sizing and shapingtheir fleets.4

Seacontrol now requires a focus on force protection and ‘battlespace dominance’ in the littoral, where conditions are different than on open ocean and land-based threats are more apparent.For many navies, this is a major shift in emphasis from the old perspectives of the Cold War.

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2. These are detailed in my Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 310–378. In many ways this article is a development of the last chapter of that book.

3. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1902), pp. 177–178.4. The emergence of the Littoral Combat Ship in response to such events as the attack on the USS Cole

illustrates something of a global trend.


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2: Maritime Security: Maintaining Good Order at Sea

Good order is threatened by everything from international crime, to direct attack and environ-mental crisis.5

Good order at sea has to involve increasing awareness of the importance of the issue, the cre-

ation of a motivating overall policy at all levels and its execution by navies and other maritimeagencies. While its immediate focus may be on the ‘home game’, globalisation means there isan important ‘away game’ to win as well. For navies of the collaborative sort, Maritime Secu-rity6 operations call for naval forces capable of constabulary and low-intensity operations.They’ll need to cooperate fully with each other and with coastguards for this.

There are differing ways of doing this, reflecting different geographical situations, levels of threat, constitutional approach, history, etc., and no single right answer. But one common fea-ture is the fact that this has to be a maritime, rather than a strictly ‘naval’, approach. But mostapproaches will usually involve naval capacities to some degree. Even high-intensity capacitiesare of value for good order tasks, though rarely designed for them. This development may rep-

resent a challenge to naval traditions, even possibly to the law of the sea.

3: Maritime Power Projection

Corbett provides the United States with a useful reminder that mankind’s destiny will ultimatelybe decided ashore. Indeed, the land is the source of most maritime disorder. The security prob-lems in the waters around Indonesia, for example, are largely a problem of the lack of gover-nance ashore. At sea, therefore, navies are usually dealing with the symptoms of the problem,not its causes.

Because maritime power projection is about helping deal with the causes, navies are at their

most important for their effect on land. Here they are defending the system indirectly by whatthey do from the sea rather than at sea.

Because it is the area where most people live, most industries can be found and through whichmost trade is conducted, the littoral is where the threats are located and so becomes the naturalarena for maritime power projection.

Clearly, ‘moving sea and air forces to deliver fire is not enough to win the global war on terror-ism, much less more conventional wars. As the only armed force with the staying power and thestrength to clear and occupy key points on the ground, the army alone can impose lasting politi-cal and cultural change.’7 Accordingly, navies have the key role at the strategic, operational andtactical levels of enabling this to happen though their contribution to joint and combined expe-ditionary task forces.

The naval contribution rests on the capacity to manoeuvre from the sea and includes the trans-portation of forces, their supply and sustainment, their support with different kinds of offensiveairpower and their protection against all forms of air attack. This includes a major emphasis onthe advantages of sea-basing, a phenomenon as evident in Europe as it is in the United States.8


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5. Till, op. cit., pp. 310–350.

6. The appearance of the concept of Maritime Security (with capital letters) around the world in the last coupleof years is noteworthy.

7. Donald A. Macgregor, Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights (London: Praeger,2003), p. 55.

8. See my Naval Transformation, Ground Forces and the Expeditionary Impulse: The Sea Basing Debate(Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, forthcoming) for a discussion of this.


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This shift towards the creation of Joint and Combined Expeditionary Task Forces has major im-plications for naval force development. It requires a shift in U.S. and European navies awayfrom open ocean operations in defence of sea lines of communication (SLOCs).

Drastic changes in the navies of Scandinavia are interesting not just for a radical change of rolebut also because they exemplify a contributory strategy—the acceptance, in other words, of the

fact that resource limitations mean that no single nation can solve its security problems on itsown, and that a collective maritime effort is required, with all the loss of sovereignty that thatimplies.

Maritime power projection is about influencing the behaviour of other states and other people.It works in times of peace as well as of conflict. It is a question of deterring adversaries from un-

welcome actions and compelling them into welcome ones. In many ways it either sets the pre-conditions for more kinetic forms of intervention ashore, or hopefully makes it unnecessary. Itis, in other words, a major and often forgotten contribution to the resolution of conflicts ashore.

The same can be said for the friendlier aspects of naval diplomacy which are aimed at reassur-

ing allies. This is, accordingly, an increasing part of contemporary maritime strategy.

4: Maintaining the Maritime Consensus

If maritime security as already discussed is the home game, a global maritime consensus is aprecondition for the distant water variant—the away game.

Experience in the Gulf shows that navies are especially useful for this because their flexibilitymeans they offer governments a means of calibrating and so facilitating their participation.

The ongoing debate about the Thousand Ship Navy is now focussing on what it means and

how such a maritime consensus might best be delivered. Because the term implies a hierarchi-cal and military-dominated approach, the term itself should probably be sunk and the conceptredefined as a global maritime community of major stakeholders in the system who are pledgedto defend it against all manner of threats. A sense of naval togetherness is an important precon-dition for this; sustaining it through mutual cooperation, combined exercises, staff exchangesand port visits therefore becomes increasingly important. Here the quantity of assets availablefor such is likely to be as important as their quality.9

But all this assumes that that Globalisation will continue and that there is a strong sense of inter-national community which in the future can be expressed and acted upon in maritime ways.

Has Globalisation a Future?

Globalisation may anyway be systemically frailer than we think and so more vulnerable to the‘other worlders.’ Some people and some regimes seem to be working to a different set of rules,as though living on another planet.

Less dramatically, some analysts, for example, argue that our comforting optimism about thefuture of globalisation depends on the assumption of sufficient resources. They go on to saythat this is proving an illusion, most obviously in the availability of oil. A steep rise in oil

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9. This is a major problem for navies facing resource limitations. The decline in the number of workaday frigatesin Europe in favour of fewer more expensive and more capable platforms is a matter of concern.


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demand, especially from China, Japan and the rest of the Asia-Pacific, is coinciding with a ter-minal fall in the discovery of new reserves.10

Anticipating that they shall soon have to start scraping the bottom of the barrel, states are al-ready manoeuvring so they can cope with a less secure energy future, and even now that is ex-acerbating relations.

Take China and Japan, for example. They are in dispute over islands which straddle potentiallyimportant marine oil fields. They are both competing for stocks in the volatile Middle East. TheChinese are heavily engaged in regimes which the United States regards as dangerous and dis-reputable (Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Iran). The Chinese are moving into the IndianOcean, watched warily by India.

In all these ways, there are still strong Westphalian tendencies in the way that states behave andtheir consequent impact on the system. Given the difficulty of predicting future events and re-flecting the possibility that globalisation may not march ever onwards, nations, the argumentgoes, had better prepare for a bleaker, less collegiate, more individual future as well. As

Thomas Friedman points out, war could ‘unflatten’ the world.11

Despite the onset of globalisation, states and the national perspective still continue. Indeed, atti-tudes towards globalisation and its maritime requirements may often reflect the kind of ‘na-tional’ perspectives that actually help determine its character and extent, as they arguably didbefore.12 These, in turn, will help determine the size, shape and role of the fleet. They suggestthat the ‘national’ rather than collaborative model of navies still obtains.

Back to the National Approach?

Nowadays, as before, this more traditional approach is characterised by an emphasis on sea

control and peer competition of the Mahanian sort that dominated naval events through the whole of the twentieth century, which call for platforms optimised for high-intensity ‘fleet v fleet’engagements, as Admiral Gorshkov used to call them. They are expensive, and probably opti-mised for open ocean operations rather than land attack. Weaponry and sensor mixesemphasise ASW, anti-air, anti-ship missiles, etc.—capacities that until a few weeks ago, wecouldn’t expect non-state forces of disorder to possess or use. Defensive mining is another char-acteristic of this approach.13

‘National’ navies also tend to regard the sea as a frontier that needs to be defended individuallyand exclusively. They have a strong focus on home waters and a marked disinclination to com-promise with neighbours. They exhibit lower levels of effective compliance with internationalmaritime conventions, and limited involvement in multilateral enforcement arrangements.They have an inherent suspicion of anything that threatens to subvert sovereignty, or to com-promise national traditions, cultures and standard operating procedures—the kind of thing, inshort, that complicates antipiracy policies in the Strait of Malacca.


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10. Jeremy Leggett, ‘Dark Secret: What They Don’t Want You to Know About the Coming Oil Crisis’, The Independent , January 20, 2006.

11. Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century (London: Penguin,2006), p. 498. See also Charles Kruathammer’s reference to the ‘natural way of nations’ in ‘But not at the

UN’, Time, October 23, 2006, p. 33.12. In Friedman’s Globalisation 1 period, dominant nations sought consciously to encourage the kind of

globalisation that would allow them to trade with advantage. Navies at that time were in the business of expanding the system, not just protecting it. Friedman, op. cit., pp. 7–9.

13. Joris Janssen Lok, ‘Back to Mine: Finnish Navy Seeks to Boost Its Underwater Weapons’, Jane’s International Defence Review, November 2006, p. 44.


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To make this possible, national navies make every effort to maintain independent all-round ca-pabilities in order to guard against the unknown and to maintain options, by constructing a bal-anced fleet.

The same thinking is seen to justify the defence of a national defence industrial base. This ex -plains the attractions of economic self-reliance which lead countries as varied as Iran and India

into the determined development of indigenous industrial capabilities, even though this maymake cooperation technologically and politically more difficult.

Conclusion: The Problem of Fleet Balance

These two competing visions of the world’s future are crudely drawn, and so are the maritimebehaviours and capabilities they call for. But certain caveats need to be entered straight away.First, neither globalisation nor the protective function of naval power is new, though the extentmight be. For many centuries, in fact, the patterns of global trade have been driven by marketforces which no one can control even if they wanted to. Navies have had this collective systemdefence role, alongside their ‘national’ roles, to some degree for several centuries.14

Nor are such roles, or the capacities they require, mutually exclusive alternatives. Indeed, suchnaval capacities as amphibious warfare ships and ship-borne helicopters can be as valuable forhumanitarian relief operations as for maritime power projection.

Accordingly, most states blend both approaches to some degree. Take the United States, for ex-ample. On the one hand they have a recent thoroughly joined-up naval and maritime securitypolicy (at least in theory), and the current CNO is pushing heavily for his collaborative “Thou-sand Ship Navy.” On the other, there’s substantial concern about the modernisation of the Chi-nese navy and about the future situation in the east and South China seas, and so they engagein a unilateral pursuit of U.S.-based technological excellence that may make it difficult for even

their closest allies to keep up with them.

The Indians, the Pakistanis, the Japanese, the Koreans exhibit the same mixed approach.

Generally speaking, though, there has been a major shift from the national to the collective.The question is the extent to which the future of globalisation will allow this shift to continue.

Addressing this issue, and its maritime implications, is central to the task of designing a navyand crafting a doctrine.

So what do naval force developers and doctrine writers do to cope with a world that, despiteour best efforts, remains unpredictable in many of its essentials? How do they approach the

problem of balance between contending approaches? How do they make for a fleet that’s suffi-ciently versatile to cope with many of the consequences of our inherent inability to predict?That’s what we’re here to discuss!

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14. Cooperative naval action against the Barbary pirates in the early nineteenth century, the issuance of an

international code of signals and the Royal Navy’s later campaign against slavery are good examples of this.Certainly the Royal Navy believed it was acting in the interests of the whole world in this and other acts of common defence. Not everyone would have agreed with this perception, such as the first nations of Canada’snorthwest, or China’s Ming Dynasty. The attitude is nicely satirised in Sellar and Yeatman, 1066 and AllThat, with their reference to ‘the important International law called Rule Britannia, technically known asFreedom of the Seas.’


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The United States and Maritime Strategy:A Parochial View from Newport

Dr. Timothy D. Hoyt

Professor of Strategy and PolicyU.S. Naval War College

The title of this paper reflects the Naval War College’s role in the creation of maritime strategyfor the U.S. Navy. Throughout the twentieth century, the Naval War College has contributed tothe Navy’s efforts to manage threats and plan for conflict, first with Japan (“War Plan Orange”)and later with the Soviet Union (the Maritime Strategy). In addressing the dramatically changedenvironment of the twenty-first century, this paper will take a very parochial view—a U.S.-centric vision of maritime strategy, based on the long tradition of historical and strategic schol-arship at the Naval War College.

As we think about the maritime strategy, and particularly its relationship with global economics,it is worth reexamining first principles and historic precedents. Strategy, as taught here at theNaval War College, is the bridge between military operations and policy—the conscious con-sideration of effectively utilizing military forces (in war and peace, as shall be discussed below)to achieve national objectives. We base our study of strategy on five major theoretical works:Sun Tzu’s The Art of War , Carl von Clausewitz’s On War , Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influenceof Sea Power Upon History, Sir Julian Corbett’s Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, andMao Zedong’s On Protracted War . Each of these works raises timeless principles that relate tothe problem we will wrestle with over the next two days—Economics and Maritime Strategy:Implications for the 21st Century.

The first issue to consider is how narrowly to define the term “strategy.” Is it, as some of the clas-sic theorists hold, solely about the use of military force in wartime? Even the master of Westernstrategic theory, Clausewitz, approaches this issue with some caution. He notes that war con-sists of two elements—war proper and preparation for war—and specifically and consciouslyfocuses on the former at the expense of the latter. This theoretical construct has contributed toenormous misunderstanding of his work, which tacitly recognizes not only the importance of economics (to provide the sinews and preparation for war) but also the importance of diplo-macy. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War , although largely focused on how to wage war, includes thecrucial contribution of how to “win without fighting.” Mao also understands the importance of preparing adequately for conflict before engaging in open combat.

Maritime strategy encompasses more than simply the preparation of maritime forces for war-fare. This is explicit in Mahan, who lists six critical factors in determining relative sea power. Itincludes not only naval operations at sea, but also amphibious operations and support forground forces, including the opening of peripheral theaters, as detailed by Corbett. HewStrachan raises this issue in a recent (and excellent) article on the varying (and sometimes con-tradictory) meanings of the word “strategy”: “The military historian needs to confront an exis-tential question: why is there strategy on the one hand and naval strategy on the other?”

In the best academic tradition, one way to answer this question is by raising another question.Why do most powers only adopt a partial or mixed maritime strategy? The answer is that moststates face immediate threats to their security, either from internal conflict or from neighboringstates. Maritime power in the modern era is intimately connected with the economic benefitsassociated with the sea and maritime trade. Maritime strategies encompass both war andpeace, because true maritime powers have major interests in the peacetime economic order.

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PANEL I: THE UNITED STATES AND MARITIME STRATEGY DR. TIMOTHY D. HOYT


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Commerce and the utilization of oceans is crucial to sustaining the economic basis of both na-tional prosperity and national security. This requires the maritime power to play an active rolein responding to a wide range of threats, but handled wisely, a maritime strategy supports boththe national interest and the broader collective good.

A true maritime strategy can be exercised only by a power (a) that can defend and expand its

access to those economic benefits that contribute to its continued maritime dominance and (b)that lacks a threat from neighboring continental states. This has only been true of a few majorstates in the modern era—states that are both unique and literally insular. The Netherlands,protected to some extent from invasion by land by the ability to flood large parts of its territory,

was a leading maritime power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Britain, an island, was uniquely positioned to take on this role in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. TheUnited States, a continent-sized virtual island—assuming no emerging major threats from Mex-ico or Canada—shared and later assumed this role in the twentieth century. The United Statesremains a maritime nation, and its economy and security are intimately connected with themaritime domain. As a result, the United States needs a maritime strategy that is more than sim-ply a good guide to naval operations in wartime.

Geoffrey Till’s paper elegantly assesses U.S. maritime strategy as poised between two compet-ing visions—a national tradition based on the Westphalian system of sovereign states, and acollaborative vision based on emerging economic globalization. I will offer a second, but notcontradictory, perspective, which focuses on the demands of war and peace. The demands of

wartime—in this case, not just the Global War on Terror/Long War, but also including other po-tential threats to regional and global stability—are concerned primarily with the deployment,threat, or actual use of military forces, operating alone or in coalition. The requirements of peacetime—management of the global economic order—of necessity require a broader andmore collaborative approach, including the use of coalitions, international cooperation andagreements, and the negotiation, perhaps, of new legal frameworks for good order at sea.These competing requirements will dominate the debate over resource allocation and strategicchoice.

History provides us with some other factors or indicators that may be helpful as we consider thefuture and the role of maritime power. The first is the changing face of economic geography.Which areas of the world are now most important for global trade? What distinct requirementsmight this new geographic reality impose on maritime powers, alone or in coalition? Second,given changes in economics and geographic priorities, how have threats to international eco-nomic stability and global order changed? Have new threats arisen? Old ones receded in im-portance? What are the ramifications of these changes for a maritime strategy? Third, given the

changes in priority and threats, what are the benefits and challenges of operating in coalition? Are there costs to collaboration, and if so, what might they be?

Maritime strategies always reflect the dominant economic geography of the period. In the six-teenth–eighteenth centuries, the major arenas of maritime competition were the Mediterra-nean, Atlantic, and Caribbean. The Caribbean’s importance in the global economy waned inthe nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the Pacific Ocean became increasingly im-portant. The Indian Ocean and Pacific rim have become the focus of maritime geography in thetwenty-first century, reflecting the rise of Asian economies and the importance of energy flowsfrom the Persian Gulf.

As economic geography changes, so do the critical chokepoints through which trade and com-merce must pass. Britain’s focus on the Western Approaches, the Strait of Gibraltar, and theBaltic passage reflected not only crucial maritime trade routes but also the key areas from whichit could contain and dominate its French and Spanish (and possibly Russian) enemies. TheCold War maritime strategy revolved around the Kola peninsula, the Greenland-Iceland-UK

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gap, and the eastern Mediterranean. Today, the major chokepoints have shifted east—theStrait of Hormuz, the Straits of Malacca, and (perhaps) the Taiwan Strait are of critical interestto maritime trade and security.

Geography also provides the means to contain regional maritime powers and potential globalcompetitors. Even the most powerful maritime states prefer to be able to control the seas for

their own use, and deny them as much as possible to prospective adversaries. When the strug-gle for sea control takes place on the oceans rather than the littorals, it demonstrates that thedominant maritime powers have lost at least some of their ability to contain their opponents.From the 1750s until the end of the Napoleonic period, a powerful fleet in the Western ap-proaches not only ensured British channel shipping but also effectively contained the French

Atlantic squadron and protected Britain from invasion. In the early 1900s, British focus shiftedto containing the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea—a mission that was largely suc-cessful. During the Second World War, however, Britain was forced to win the Battle of the At-lantic far from British shores, and Britain’s possessions in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean

were seriously threatened. Today, the U.S. Navy increasingly focuses on the littorals, suggest-ing the absence of a major maritime competitor. This condition, however, is neither permanent

nor irrevocable.

One of the primary ways to contain potential competitors geographically and to ensure pres-ence in critical regions is through the use of bases—one of Mahan’s greatest interests. Mahan’sfascination with colonies and bases reflects not only his profound respect for history, but alsothe technological realities of his era. Without bases, a coal-fired fleet has enormous difficultyoperating in periods of either war or peace, as amply demonstrated by the passage and loss of the Russian Baltic Fleet in 1905. Colonial possessions were important for both base facilitiesand economic exploitation in the mercantilist period.

Today, base rights are often the result of historical legacy and are subject to the domestic poli-tics of the host country. They continue to be crucial for access to distant regions, to provide po-litical influence in areas of potential instability, and to provide for a deterrent posture againstmore serious threats. One area of serious concern for the maritime strategy is the problem of managing risks while still maintaining adequate base facilities. Large base complexes are in-creasingly vulnerable to proliferating weapons of mass destruction. Use of their facilities in crisismay be denied or constrained by local political opposition. Efforts to provide for remote, self-sustained bases removed from the shores of allies and adversaries alike may prove either tech-nologically infeasible or economically unaffordable. At the same time, public commitment to

withdrawing from major base complexes will raise political concerns in our allies and may em-bolden potential adversaries or competitors, weakening perceptions of our commitment to

maritime security, with consequent effects on maritime trade.This maritime strategy must also reflect the changing nature of threats to global order and re-gional stability. Geoffrey Till has raised the key issue of state versus nonstate actors in his paper.Maritime powers must also consider the rise of other naval powers, whether regionally focusedor global in scale. Some regional naval powers evolve into much more serious threats overtime—Russia was a Baltic power in the eighteenth century and became first a Black Sea powerin the nineteenth century and then a Pacific and later a global power in the twentieth century.

Japan started as a power in Northeast Asia at the turn of the twentieth century but by 1942threatened multiple adjacent regions including Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and

Australia.

Regional powers can prove significant obstacles to even a dominant maritime power, particu-larly when located at strategic chokepoints. Britain went to great lengths to maintain access tothe Baltic in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the maritime threat of Fascist It-aly caused enormous difficulties for British planners from 1935–1943. Powers with global

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reach force maritime powers to fight for sea control in an oceanic, vice littoral, environment.Both Nazi Germany and the USSR sought to restructure the global system and possessed theresources to endanger maritime commerce on a global level.

Threats to the system do not have to be openly hostile. The role of neutrals and reluctant partic-ipants in the prevailing economic system can shape the nature of maritime strategy in both war

and peace. U.S. concerns over the rights of neutral shipping remained an element of concernfor the Royal Navy for over a century. The continental system briefly menaced British eco-nomic vitality from 1807–1812. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, oil and energyflows have been a major potential constraint on both the exercise of maritime power and themaintenance of a commercial global economy. Today we even see China successfully contain-ing information flows, despite the presence of a seemingly pervasive global internet.

One key element in the creation of a U.S. maritime strategy will be the balancing of current andprojected or potential threats. The United States is currently fighting a “long war” against atransnational nonstate movement that pursues its political ends through terrorism (amongothermeans). This conflict imposes significant military and economic costs on the United States

that will shape, to some extent, the size and role of the future U.S. Navy and its ability to carryout any maritime strategy. These costs include the impact of prolonged operations on theground forces of the United States and the need to assign naval personnel to provide a widerange of assistance and support functions, the need for greater maritime domain awareness,and a gradual drawing down of some oceanic capabilities (including antisubmarine warfare) infavor of more littoral ones (interdiction).

On the other hand, while the United States may not discern an emerging peer competitor, sig-nificant regional powers are expanding their maritime capabilities in core maritime areas. Al-though none of these states is necessarily a U.S. adversary (and two, in fact, are democracies),each is creating significant regional maritime power in areas of intense commercial and eco-nomic importance. China continues to pursue greater maritime reach and capability. It is alsobuilding a formidable capacity to menace Taiwan, although whether a war in the Taiwan Strait

will ever occur remains an uncertain proposition at best. India’s maritime doctrine seeks to ex-pand Indian influence to encompass the entire Indian Ocean, from East Africa to the Indone-sian archipelago. Indian maritime interests have been matched by a naval modernizationprogram and increased naval cooperation—Indian naval vessels engage in exercises with a

wide range of partners and have recently engaged in humanitarian missions throughout the In-dian Ocean and in the Mediterranean during the Lebanon crisis of 2006. Japan is extending itsown maritime reach to the Straits of Malacca. Finally, even weaker maritime powers (includingIran) are now taking advantage of existing and emerging technologies to create a formidable

anti-access capability, which can threaten vital chokepoints and complicate U.S. military intervention in times of crisis.

The absence of a global threat, and the interest of many nations in maritime security and eco-nomic stability, increase the opportunity for sharing burdens and operating in collaboration.Economic stability and maritime security require international cooperation and the mainte-nance of international law. In addition, maritime powers have traditionally maintained theirposition through sharing the benefits of sea power. The United States currently has a vital eco-nomic and national interest in the status quo and must recognize that it can neither maintain itsprosperity in isolation from the international system nor maintain the system by itself. Becausemost other states either do benefit or potentially can benefit from the existing international eco-

nomic order, the United States should, whenever possible, engage them in helping keep goodorder at sea and collaborate to the maximum extent possible in peacetime. U.S. leadershipmust also recognize, however, that states that collaborate with us in peace may not choose tofollow us into war. A maritime coalition is not necessarily the same as a wartime alliance.

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If we are designing the maritime strategy with a 20- to 30-year vision, planners must considerfour key issues for which there are no obvious answers. The first is the relative priority of for-

ward presence versus homeland defense. For decades the U.S. Navy could achieve the latterby focusing almost exclusively on the former. Today, the availability of destructive technologyand ease of its transfer and use make homeland defense a greater priority than ever. A secondissue is whether the United States should seek to dominate or manage technological change.

The Royal Navy successfully maintained its maritime dominance throughout the nineteenthcentury through the management of technological change. The United States seeks a state of constant technological transformation. It is not clear, given current economic and industrialtrends, whether the United Stateswill be able to continue dominating the technological arena.

A third issue is whether the maritime strategy should focus on the preparation for war (manag-ing the global economic system and the maritime environment) or on war proper (the LongWar). The former requires more emphasis on the oceanic environment and the crucial sealanes in the Pacific and Indian oceans, while the latter is more littoral-focused and centersaround the Middle East. Finally, the United States must consider the role of coalitions and di-plomacy. The United States currently does not face a peer competitor or system-challenging

power. If such a threat does emerge in the near future, it will be the result of a coalition of hostileregional and medium powers. Realistically, this can only come about if the United States alien-ates significant players in the international system, or if we withdraw from the system and othersmust fill the vacuum. It is worth remembering that the only serious challenge to British maritimedominance—the naval campaigns of 1778–1782—came about as the result of a coincidenceof British strategic overstretch, British naval disarmament, and the diplomatic alienation (orneutrality) of all the other major European powers.

The virtues of collaboration and coalition-building, vice unilateralism or isolationism, are obvi-ous: greater economic benefits to all participants in the international system, and enhanced sta-bility in the maritime domain. The 1000-ship navy concept is an important step in thisdirection. The U.S. Navy’s role is vital in ensuring the stability of the system, as well as in deter-ring and defeating threats to it. This conference, and others like it, will help shape the strategythat will make it possible, and I’m delighted that we all have this opportunity to play a role inthat process. Thank you.

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Panel I: Maritime Strategy in aGlobalizing World

Summary of Discussion

Dr. John H. Maurer Chairman, Strategy and Policy Department

U.S. Naval War College

The Ruger Conference began with presentations given by Panel I, consisting of Barry Posen,Geoffrey Till, and Timothy Hoyt. Their presentations triggered a lively, informative, and in-sightful discussion about globalization, nationalism, and grand strategy.

A leadoff question about globalization led to a wide-ranging discussion about the position of

the United States in the international strategic environment. One panelist highlighted howmany around the world identify the United States as the principal agent of globalization. “Weare globalization HQ,” he put it. The military predominance of the United States’ armed forcesserves as an enabler of globalization. Those around the world who oppose globalization cometo view the United States as the cause of the

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